Thursday, April 1, 2010

Whoopi Goldberg hosting a tribute to George Carlin at the New York Public Library last Wednesday (top photo), Kelly Bensimon hanging out at the Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid launch at the IAC Building Tuesday (middle photo), Miike Snow performing at Webster Hall Saturday night (bottom photo), Tracy Morgan doing a four-night stand at Caroline's on Broadway Thursday, and Erykah Badu performing a (semi) secret show at Good Units Saturday night.

It was a rainy, 45-degree morning Tuesday in New York, but that didn't faze some 400 Usher fans who camped outside of Nokia Theatre in Times Square to see their boy perform live on Good Morning America!

"We got here at three this morning," a pair of high school students from Astoria told Poison Ivy. "We couldn't sleep."

Now that's dedication!!!

"These songs speak to me, they're about personal experiences in my life," Usher told the crowd, once inside, about new record Raymond v Raymond.

It's the last night of Danish rock band Kashmir's three-week North American tour, and I'm sitting at New York's Mercury Lounge Thursday with drummer Asger Techau (pictured second from left) and bassist Mads Tunebjerg (far right).

"We were a little insecure about how the tour was going to go," Techau admits, citing the band's nerves on how their new record would be received.

But Techau had no reason to worry.

Outside of the venue, a line wraps around the block for the band who count David Bowie, Lou Reed and most recently Raphael Saadiq, as fans.

"Raphael likes music for its quality, not its genre," Techau says, recalling a recent L.A. day when Saadiq invited the band to his studio to hang out.

"We were kind of surprised because his music is very different from ours," Tunebjerg says. "We had a show later that day and he came to see it."

Bowie and Reed's support - which includes vocal appearances on 2005's No Balance Palace - was a little more jolting.

"We were working with Bowie's long-time [producer] Tony Visconti, and at one point we started to joke that it'd be cool to have Bowie sing on 'The Cynic'," explains Techau.

"It was a bit of a joke, cause obviously that would never happen. And then Tony was like, 'I'll ask him.' So one day Tony wrote an email to Bowie, 'How would you feel about maybe singing on this song?' And he just replied, 'I would have no problem doing that.' We were speechless."

"In 2005, Bowie hadn't been doing many recordings so he was very much in the mood for it," Tunebjerg recalls.

"In the studio, he said 'Tony, just roll the tape for me. I'm going to try and have a go at it.' He knew the song, he had it on his iPod. He had one or two runs and he was there. Me and Kasper [Eistrup] were sitting on the sofa. We couldn't move or speak because the atmosphere was so intense."

"A lot of the lyrics were written and recorded in New York, " Techau added, "so it seemed only fitting that we could get Mr. New York Lou Reed to recite that poem."

"Our intention was not to get Bowie or Reed on the album," Tunebjerg wants to make clear. "It just kind of happened."

A fan spots us and asks if Kashmir are going to play "Stillboy," their latest single in Denmark. Techau gives him a straight "yes."

"Kasper traveled a lot in order to write material for Trespassers," Tunebjerg explains, of the record that came out last month. "We would actually send him off to finish his work, cause he was kind of getting distracted in Copenhagen. He's so easily distracted. He's the first one to admit that."

While outside, a group of dudes make their way to the front of the line boasting only passports. "We came here from Denmark today," they tell the bouncer.

When I tell the band about this, they giggle.

"I hope they at least combined it with a vacation," Techau says. "We have a Denmark tour coming up."

It was a night of Dashboard classics and covers Friday at the band's sold-out concert at Nokia Theatre in Times Square.

Frontman Chris Carrabba coupled DC favorites ("The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most," "Vindicated," "The Good Fight,") with old school gems, including Bryan Adam's 1984 "Summer of '69" and Weezer's "El Scorcho" (check out a clip of that performance, above).

"We've been influenced by a lot of bands over the years," confessed Carrabba, who formed Dashboard in 1999 in Boca Raton, Florida.

We'll never forget going to see Carrabba in Davie, Florida's now-defunct Club Q at age 14 in 2000 - there were less than 100 people in the room and hardly any of them were paying attention!

The boy has come a long way!

Check out the performance of the song that started our love affair with DC, "Screaming Infidelities," below.